‘You’re not alone. You haven’t died’ by Osip Mandelstam

You're not alone. You haven't died,
while you still,beggar-woman at your side,
take pleasure in the grandeur of the plain,
the gloom, the cold,the whirlwinds of snow.


In sumptuous penury, in mighty poverty
live comforted and at rest -
your days and nights are blest,
your sweet-voiced labour without sin.


Unhappy he, a shadow of himself,
whom a bark astounds and the wind mows down,
and to be pitied he, more dead than alive,
who begs handouts from a ghost.


by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam.)
His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(1937)
translated by Andrew Davis

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It Was Spring Time In The Rockies by Terry Tapp

It was spring time in the Rockies and the snow was raining hard,

When a barefoot beggar in clogs on came slowly dashing by;

He turned a straight crooked corner and saw a dead donkey die,

So he took out his pistol to stab him, and the donkey winked an eye.

 

– by Terry Tapp